“Cor,” Rael called from the well. “Look around carefully, but do not go into any of the buildings without me. Most of them are dangerous.’
Cor walked the grounds warily, not going near any of the buildings. Besides the keep and its tower, he counted six buildings, none of them very large. As he made his way through the yard, he found a stone wall roughly two feet in height wrapping around the back of the keep, and as he approached it, he realized he was looking over a vast blue body of water.
“I suppose you are used to the water, more so than me. When we have some time, I will show you how to reach the beach and the water,” Rael said, causing Cor to jump as he had no idea the man had come up behind him. “Cor, do not go very close to that wall. It is old and waiting to crumble. Follow me inside, and I will show you where you can sleep.”
He led Cor to the stone keep, but they entered a small door in the side of the building rather than the large double doors at the front. Rael explained the front of the building was not safe, and he also warned Cor to never venture upwards into the tower. During horrific storms that occasionally made land, the tower often sounded as if it may crash down at any moment. He showed Cor the larder, where he may help himself to any food or drink he found there, and several other rooms, including a large study. The study was full of books and scrolls, many of them obviously ancient with dust, and s large oak table stood in the middle of the room on a silk rug that crumbled to dust as it was tread upon. On one side stood a large stone fireplace that clearly had been used more recently than most of the castle.
“If you are hungry,” said Rael, “help yourself to something to eat. Can you read Rumedian?”
“What is Rumedian?” Cor asked; he had met many peoples in his years at see, but never a Rumedian.
Rael sighed, “You can read Western, yes? Good, I have to find some volumes for you.”
Cor watched as Rael moved about the shelves and decided to head to the pantry while the man looked through the dust. The room was rather cool and the air dry, and he found it well stocked with aged cheeses, preserved meats, a random assortment of fruit and somewhat stale bread. He chose some of this at random, ignoring the barrel of apples; he felt like he had eaten a hundred apples in the last few days, and he returned to the study, food in his arms.
“Please eat in the larder,” Rael said without looking up. “At the least, do not bring food or drink into this room. The texts in here are too old and valuable to risk exposure to an accidental spill.”
After eating, Cor returned to the study to find Rael waiting for him. He had selected several tomes and set them in a stack, and he was writing on blank parchment.
“Do you know what a Dahken is?” Rael asked without looking up from his writing.
“No.”
“In the days before The Cleansing,” Rael said these last two words with no small degree of bitter sarcasm, “you would have been found years ago. There is much for you to learn, and we will start tomorrow, but now let me show you where you will sleep.”
He took Cor to a small room. It contained two buckets, one of which Rael filled with water, a candelabra with three new candles and a new cotton mattress. There were several folded wool blankets next to the mattress, and a rug made of animal skins covered most of the floor.
“I know it is not late, but the last few days were hard. Get some sleep Cor.”
Rael turned and left the room. Cor sat down on the mattress, finding it quite soft and looked around the room blankly, and he lay back slowly, the cotton mattress wrapping itself around him. He knew he should feel something, anger or sadness perhaps, but he didn’t even understand how this had all happened. Cor drifted off to sleep, and on some level he expected to wake up in the morning to his mother’s face; unfortunately, he didn’t.
* * *
Palius’ hands shook as if with palsy as he read the dispatch from Jonn, the lead administrative priest in Martherus. They found the boy through amazing luck within days of his birth; of course the Queen Herself and many of her highest priests praised Garod. They had watched him closely and even become directly involved in his education at his parents’ request. And then he had disappeared, run away it seemed, having boarded a seagoing vessel from Tigol. The priest, Jonn, had just received word that the boy, now almost a man, had appeared near home. Jonn decided to call on the boy’s home in the early afternoon and found the boy’s parents murdered along with another dead man, who was perhaps a Loszian. The man had a strange wound on his shoulder, as if he had been skinned there, and a gaping sword wound clean through his midsection; not to mention he had been decapitated expertly. The boy’s parents had been killed with daggers the likes of which the man carried, so he had killed the boy’s parents.
Who killed the killer? Where was Cor? This entire matter would chase him into his grave.
Jonn immediately sent word to his superior in Martherus, who then sent his fastest rider with the authority to commandeer the Queen’s horses. Garod’s priests had no way to communicate through their god’s power, and the West had long found birds to be unreliable. To resolve this issue some time ago, Aquis invested a large amount of money in certain highways connecting all of the West’s capitals and many of its main cities. Outposts were placed at key points along these roads, allowing a rider with the proper authorization to ride their horse near to death and switch to a fresh horse at an outpost.
Palius pinched the bridge of his nose in thought as he stalked the halls of the palace headed for his queen’s chambers. She hadn’t held court or audience today, preferring to tend to the more mundane matters of ruling from her desk. He entered her chambers without a knock or introduction from the guards; as her highest advisor, Palius had open access to Queen Erella at all times. Often, his information could not wait for etiquette, and he found her seated at her desk, leaning against the plush high backed chair. He dropped his hand from his nose in consideration of her; her eyes were closed, and she looked at peace.
“Palius, you are the only person allowed in these rooms without so much as a knock,” she said, startling him as she opened her eyes. “So, I know you do not do so without reason.”
“I am sorry Majesty. I was not sure if I should disturb you.”
She laughed with mirth at this. “You weren’t sure I was alive you mean. Do not worry; I live through the grace of Garod, and I live as long as he needs me to serve.”
“Yes my queen,” Palius answered automatically; he had never been one for religion or mysticism. “I have news most disturbing.” Palius summarized the most recent news from Jonn, including his own conclusions he had drawn from the obvious evidence, and he watched as Queen Erella’s expression changed dramatically to one of exhaustion.
“I have already dispatched rangers to track anyone who may have taken the boy, but I doubt their ability to help. It has been several days since this happened; the likelihood of them tracking the boy’s abductor at this point are slim,” Palius concluded.
“We must find him,” Queen Erella almost whispered.
“Finding him means finding his abductor. What can we divine about the abductor? He is clearly a trained fighting man; he killed the Loszian with apparent ease. The wound is from a double edged longsword, a common weapon used by all of the peoples across this continent. He obviously isn’t a Loszian, which makes him a Westerner or Northman,” Palius paused.
“We must also consider that he may be a mercenary looking to collect a Loszian bounty, a man with no real loyalty to anyone,” said the queen.
“Yes,” agreed Palius, “that’s very possible. He let the Loszian do the real work of finding the boy, then slew him and took the boy back to Losz himself.”
“Is it possible,” the queen met Palius’ eyes, “that he was taken by another Dahken?”
“My queen, I see no reason for such a conclusion. The Dahken have been dead for over five hundred years, since The Cleansing. No one, no one made mention of another,” Palius answered.
“They worship a bloo
d god, Palius. They are said to spring from him at any time,” she countered.
“Majesty, the Dahken were known for their magic, and there was no evidence of any foul sorcery where the child’s parents were found. Besides, if the Dahken still existed, I think we would have seen some evidence. I don’t think they could continue to hide their existence for so long a time,” reasoned Palius.
“Perhaps,” Queen Erella said quietly, closing her eyes.
7.
Cor awoke on his own shortly before dawn, and he wandered out of his small room, finding Rael in the larder. The man had already set a number of things out on the table, and Cor sat without saying a word, taking a small share of the food and eating quietly.
“I am not one for niceties, nor am I much for etiquette,” Rael said, sitting down. “I am sure it comes from my limited contact with other people over the last number of years.
“Certainly you know that you are different from other Westerners. Your coughing, the color of your skin are symptoms of this. You are of a race called the Dahken. I know your parents were Westerners, but that means nothing. Dahken are magical, our blood is imbued with power by the god Dahk.”
“The priests of Garod say magic is evil,” Cor stated, repeating what he had been taught for years by his parents and the priests.
“Of course they do. Magic threatens them,” Rael answered. “But you see, magic comes from the gods. The priests of Garod practice magic, but they call it prayer, divine power, miracles. It is no different. Yes, the Western gods are innately good, just as the gods of Losz are innately evil, but the truth of how the gods work in the world through magic is not taught to Westerners.”
“Who is Dahk? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Dahk,” Rael proceeded slowly, “is the God of Blood.”
“So, you worship a god of evil?” Cor asked. The very idea made him gaze upon Rael aghast.
“I worship no god, nor is Dahk a god of evil. The gods do not need our worship, and exactly how they choose who among us wield their powers is unknown to us. As I said, Dahk is the God of Blood; all men, good and evil, have blood. It is how you use your power as a Dahken that makes you good or evil. It has no reflection on Him.”
“So, I can use magic?” Cor asked, puzzled.
“Not so much in the sense of the word as you understand it,” replied Rael patiently. “Much of our power is innate, constantly in existence. We do not call on a god to use our powers as the priests of Garod or sorcerers in Losz do. The power is there, and you must simply know how to use it. Some of our powers are universal to all Dahken, while others are not. You will have to discover which powers you have on your own. But there is something about you Cor; I have never felt another Dahken as strikingly as you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Do not concern yourself with that too much for now. Let me just say, it is how I came to find you, and how I knew you had returned to the West,” Rael explained. “It is why you came with me. Our power comes from our blood, and it sometimes tells us what we should do.”
After breakfast, they returned to the study where Cor took a chair. Rael handed him a parchment scroll tied with a single silk cord.
“Begin with this,” he said.
“What is it?” Cor asked without untying it.
“It is a brief history of the West by the Chronicler. When you are finished, find me outside.”
* * *
I will not speak of Rumedia prior to the rising of the gods we know. Some of us know civilization existed prior to our gods, but we have no direct record of it. There are signs of the ancients however; their tombs and even parts of their cities may be found by a stroke of luck in the dark places of the world. We do not know what happened to those people or their gods, for their gods were not ours. Our gods themselves do not know how they rose to divinity, or at least, they do not reveal their path to us. When they came to be gods, the world was populated with tribes of men with no real civilization to speak of, but they learned to use tools and build rudimentary homes. The Greater Gods watched and decided to each select a people to make theirs.
Hykan, god of fire, and the other elemental gods chose a bronze skinned race in the center of Dulkur, the eastern continent. This land of great jungles and deserts was horrific and untamed, much like the elementals themselves, and they taught these people how to use magic of fire, lightning and other elemental forces. None of the other gods wanted anything to do with that land, and the godless tribes quickly fell into servitude when faced with their conquerors’ magic.
The scholars among the gods took the southern continent, Tigol. They wanted little to do with the others, who were sometimes infantile in their competition, and endowed their peoples with a magic altogether different. They gave these people science, technology and mathematics, and while they knew that knowledge would eventually filter to other parts of the world, their people would always be the most advanced in the world.
Urso, the Great Bear and God of the Wild and the Hunt, took the peoples who would form the Northern Kingdoms, as they were large and hardy like him. With his presence, the tribes of the north coalesced into a hierarchy led by shamans and great warrior chiefs. Three distinct clans arose to eventually become the Northern Kingdoms.
And Garod, King of the Gods of Light, chose the people we now know as Westerners. A pragmatic lot, they easily adapted to whatever a situation called for, and they spread quickly and easily across the western continent and even established trade with the peoples of Tigol. This gave the Westerners the knowledge of iron and then steel, which they used on several occasions to war with Urso’s people of the north. The Bear’s people fought terrifically, and even armed with steel the Westerners simply were not prepared for the ferocity of such wars. Eventually, an easy truce emerged between the two civilizations.
There is yet one Greater God that has gone unmentioned, and that god is Dahk, God of Blood. Dahk did not choose a people to empower; his power was necessary for life to take hold at all, and in many ways he felt that all the people in the world were his. Sometimes, a child would be born to apparently fall ill to an unknown sickness, and if the child survived, it would eventually take on an unnatural gray pallor, regardless of its natural skin color. Dahk realized that he had inadvertently created his own chosen race, and he revealed himself to one such man. Dahk taught him of the power his blood contained and beseeched the man to find others of his kind, and as such, a race of warriors called the Dahken was born. I should relate the rest of their history in another writing.
The Western calendar starts at year one, Before Cleansing (abbreviated B.C.). In one thousand B.C., give or take a few centuries, a great meteor smashed into the eastern part of the continent. It created a great darkness, a cloud of ash and dust that settled over nearly half of the land. This meteor brought with it something terrible, and before then the world hadn’t known true evil, darkness. A new pantheon of gods emerged from the rubble, and those people too near the center were immediately changed, twisted into alien imitations of themselves, tall and gaunt, limbs and joints stretched. They found they wielded great powers of necromancy, control over the dead, the ability to cause death, famine and plague. The Loszians had arrived.
The West, caught in panic and disarray, had no defense against these sorcerers. The Loszians displayed magic the likes of which the Westerners had never seen, and while Garod’s power was equal to the power of the Loszian gods, his people were not ready for an invasion of such terror. The Loszian necromancers enslaved living and dead Westerners alike and swept unstoppably across the continent. Garod’s people were forced to flee to the south to Tigol or keep hidden their worship as they toiled to build huge purple and black towers. The Loszian sorcerers were cruel, taking what they willed and discarding of it as quickly. Many of them learned they could breed with the Westerners, creating another class between them and their slaves, and many Westerners also realized the social value of breeding with their masters.
The North remai
ned free for the most part, not for lack of trying by the Loszian Empire. The Loszians found the northern peoples to be indomitable. Certainly they could conquer portions of the Northern Kingdoms, but even their necromancers couldn’t defeat the harsh winters and alpine conditions for long.
The Loszians also learned to leave the Dahken in their strongholds. The Dahken were content to allow the Loszians to conquer as much of the world as they wanted, so long as the Dahken remained free. They met on the field of battle only one time, when two hundred Dahken faced three thousand Loszian soldiers, undead servants and necromancers. The Loszians found almost immediately that their dark sorcery had little to no effect on their foes, and being so reliant on magic, the Loszian soldiers could not contend with an organized and fearless enemy. Combined with the Dahkens’ own unique blood magic abilities, the Loszian host was absolutely slaughtered. The Dahken returned to their enclaves, and the Loszians let them.
By roughly fifteen hundred B.C., the Loszian Empire reigned supreme over the West. The Westerners never gave up hope and put their faith in Garod, who chaffed greatly at his chosen people being trodden upon. The Loszians lived in evil decadence on the backs of His people. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, the gods are not all powerful, nor may they easily affect the lives of mortals. They can make minor impacts by sending visions, bestowing minor blessings and the like, but in order to make a major change in the world requires them to save up much of their power and loose it at the proper time.
In the year 2994 B.C. this happened. Garod instilled into one unborn child all of his strength and power. This child was born knowing of his divine link with Garod, and before he was an adult, he could perform miracles of the utmost power. Word of this boy spread quickly, bringing both pilgrims who would follow him and Loszians who would slay him. His name was Werth, and he wielded great powers bestowed on him by Garod; he could heal horrendous wounds and illnesses, even giving life back to those who had just recently died. Loszian sorcery had little effect on him, and through Werth, the West regained its pride and strength. He showed others how to recognize the power of Garod within themselves, and in 3028 B.C. the Westerners launched a holy war against the Loszian Empire, which became known as The Cleansing. The Loszians, though powerful in their sorcery were weak in their decadence, and the empire was not prepared for a massive uprising led by a peasant who wielded awesome and divine powers. By 3035 B.C. the people of Garod had freed a full half of the continent. The Loszians had finally shaken off their fugue and consolidated their power on the eastern half of the continent, and nearly three more years of warfare continued. The remade west, now called the Shining West, held its own, but could make no more headway against the empire.
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